


The Ceremony of Innocence

by Eldritchhorrors



Series: The Cold Song [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Case Fic, Case violence and all that can entail, Character Study, Childhood, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Psychological Drama, Romance, Violins, au after season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:17:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldritchhorrors/pseuds/Eldritchhorrors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is tested to the shattering point, but some things must be broken before they can be fixed, and some things can never remain hidden...especially from ourselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ceremony of Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to the wonderful Pennypaperbrain, for her excellent beta and britpick work. Any mistakes are my own.

  


“And in that hour,  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned...”

Benjamin Britten -- The Turn Of The Screw  
Libretto -- Myfanwy Piper

  
  


  
                                            The Ceremony of Innocence  
  
Things had been getting dreadfully dull. He’d give John’s left testicle for a case.  
  
There was the experiment with the fatty tissue in the crisper, but that wouldn’t be ready for another week at the earliest.  
  
John was an excellent distraction, but there was only so much sex two men over thirty could have before they had to tap out.  
  
The morning air was thick, and the gentle rhythmic patter of rain against the flat’s windows begged for musical accompaniment.  
  
There was a piece for the Baroque violin he wanted to try, but he didn’t feel like he could be still for long enough to devote to it the kind of single-mindedness it required. And...he wasn’t feeling very Baroque right now. He often did. When he wasn’t feeling modern. Or angry.  
  
Not very Bach-like at the moment, no.  
  
He tried on a few pieces for mood, but couldn’t settle on any one thing. Maybe Vivaldi instead? A different feel of Baroque.  
  
No. Too much emotional investment. His Winter would sound like a slight chill.  
  
He took refuge in modernity instead.  
  
And a break for toast.  
  
Shostakovitch String Quartet number two. Triumphant A major sliding into an unsure waltz. This was his favorite of the 15 quartets, no matter that the eighth was so famous. The restatement of the theme, the pulsating end to the first overture and the start of the second part. The second. Yes! This is what fit his mood of the morning. Recitative and romance, pensive, austere, ambiguous sound, profoundly sincere violin monologue that kept time beautifully with the pattering of rain against the windows, a hazy dawn of a piece that lit the room with the same ambient light as the muted sun outside. It was exquisitely like the quiet spirituality of Beethoven’s last quartets, distilled for a more contemporary audience.  
  
Yes.  
  
The morning filtered around him, muffled by the violin, but Sherlock was aware of all the important things. John was lolling on the sofa, something he rarely did but which often corresponded with a day off and this sort of weather. Mrs. Hudson was bustling around the room, probably making a hash of his carefully ordered chaos and tut-tutting at the more permanent messes.  
  
There was a footstep on the stair. Dress shoes, but well-worn, quieted as Lestrade ascended two at a time.  
  
A case. Suddenly the violin and Soviet composers could wait.  
  
And Lestrade was bringing him something...interesting. Lestrade had slept, but only just. A call had come in and he’d dashed from his flat not bothering with his usual ablutions or his morning coffee, which was more important to a copper anyway. Dimmock should have had this one considering the time of the call, but it was given to Lestrade, so it was one of a series he was already investigating. There weren’t any interesting serials currently in the paper, and Sherlock’s informant at the yard hadn’t been forthcoming about it, _perhaps he’d already grown jaded about Sherlock’s involvement maybe he wasn’t in the know worth investigating might need a new friend in the force_ , so it was something they’d kept a tight lid on.  
  
Curiouser and curiouser.  
  
He dressed quickly, but lingered in front of the mirror for a moment to make sure that there was nothing incriminating showing, no beard burn, no abrasions or suction marks. He was looking at his skin, but his mind was on Lestrade’s claim that this case was a ‘bad one.’ It was a trite phrase that didn’t really convey what Lestrade meant, but Sherlock was familiar enough with his jargon that he had an idea about what they would find.  
  
Lestrade was a paternal man who didn’t suffer this type of crime easily -- most did not. The few that could probably did what Sherlock did -- deletion. Through force of will, or perhaps drink.  
  
Simple. Effective.  
  
Sherlock splashed water on his face and looked at himself one last time. His face was clear. Familiar. Blank. Hard.  
  
Simple. Effective.  
  
He stalked out the door and down the stairs, calling for John and Lestrade to hurry.  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
John was stretching out on the sofa in a very Sherlockian position, hands behind his head as he listened to Sherlock play.  
  
He’d got up late, twisted in the sheets that Sherlock never failed to turn into some sort of soft origami. Sherlock’s legs had tangled with his, but Sherlock was face down on the edge of the bed, one arm trailing along the floor. Sherlock’s spine seemed impossibly long, like some Romantic artist had added too many vertebrae, but his bum was round and firm, barely hidden by the creased cotton wrapped around it.  
  
It was gorgeous and cozy warm. John was all shagged out, and he didn’t feel much of a need to get up and accomplish anything so he lay there, softly rubbing Sherlock’s back until the lure of tea and the need to void his bladder made rising a necessity.  
  
He shrugged on Sherlock’s blue dressing gown over his boxers and padded into the kitchen for a cuppa before slouching his way over to the sofa and melting into it with the firm conviction that he didn’t need to do a damn thing today. Didn’t even pick up the paper, though it was right there and Sherlock hadn’t yet ruined the crossword by solving it in ink. There was a slight drizzle outside, the window sweating a little with the chill moisture, and days like this were meant to be spent lazing around inside, reading, or cuddling. Maybe work on his writing a little later. Things with no urgency to them.  
  
It was a while before Sherlock zombied his way out of his room, rubbing his eyes and looking for a cup of tea himself. He’d pulled on some navy boxer briefs and a white button down that he hadn’t bothered to button. The white of the shirt matched the white of the bunny slippers on his feet, a gift from John that had come about when he found out that Sherlock had never seen, or had deleted the memory of, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He’d rectified that grievous hole in Sherlock’s ‘cultural education’ in much the same way Sherlock tried to remedy the holes in his, and he couldn’t stifle the smile that emerged whenever he saw them on Sherlock’s feet. They had little fangs on them.  
  
John would have made him tea, but...fuck. That would require getting up.  
  
Sherlock made tea and dry toast before grunting out a greeting, then doodled something on a notepad as he slumped over the kitchen table. He didn’t perk up until his second cup of tea. John knew he had perked up because he crossed the room in those ridiculous slippers to grab his violin out of its case, taking it back to the kitchen chair.  
  
John couldn’t see what he was doing, but it was several minutes before he heard a careful pizzicato that gained momentum, then a pause while Sherlock fiddled with his bow.  
  
When the music finally began John knew the piece. Sherlock had been practicing it on and off for the past several weeks. It was a recently composed Glass partita for solo violin. It started out like slowly poured treacle, then quickened into a more frantic pace without losing its sensuality.  
  
He rather liked it. He’d have to record it so they could use it as a soundtrack for sex one day. Which was a good idea, a soundtrack for sex. Maybe he could get Sherlock to make a few of them, depending on the mood. The thought made John blush a bit, because he was going to _ask Sherlock for a mix tape_ even though they were both grown men. He put his feet up on the arm of the sofa and let his head hang off the edge of the cushion so the pink in his cheeks could be blamed on increased blood flow to his face.  
  
Mrs. Hudson came in a bit later, picking up as she went, quietly tutting, but John had figured out that she visited, and cleaned, more often when Sherlock was coaxing something gorgeous from his instrument.  
  
John smiled. If Sherlock was playing he wasn’t opening his mouth. They might be having sex, and John might be liking it, but John wasn’t blind to any of Sherlock’s numerous faults. The man still drove him round the twist sometimes.  
  
The Glass faded into something indeterminate, then something that sounded crazily like Master of Puppets, then a line or two from a Shostakovitch string quartet -- the second one, he thought. Sherlock was doodling on his violin, just as much as he had on the notepad earlier, not settling on any one thing until the Shostakovitch took flight. The morning was rare -- lazy, domestic and silly looking, he was sure.  
  
It was lovely.  
  
And ruined completely when Lestrade let himself in looking grim and tired.  
  
He closed the door behind him with a soft click before leaning against it. There were dark bags under his eyes, and the light patterning of crow’s feet had deepened to match the crease in his forehead, aging him by at least five years.  
  
Despite all that Lestrade grinned at the picture Sherlock made. John sat up to get a better look, and Sherlock was bolt upright in the dining chair, chest bare, shirttails askew, bunny-slippered feet canted out as he played.  
  
With a last bite of toast sticking out of his mouth.  
  
Sherlock merely raised an eyebrow and pulled his bow to an abrupt finish as he sucked in the last bit of crust.  
  
“Don’t.” Sherlock’s voice was firm, and only slightly distorted by the food he was chewing.  
  
“Don’t what?”  
  
“Touch the camera phone and you’re a dead man.”  
  
“Wish I had time to joke, but I need you on this one.”  
  
“Just let me get dressed.” Sherlock popped up, wiping his instrument down with a hasty cloth before putting the violin in its case and rushing off.  
  
“Sherlock...” Lestrade ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. “This is a _bad_ one.”  
  
Sherlock paused on the way to his bedroom and nodded once, decisively, before closing the door behind him. John was just getting up to do the same, feeling a little thrill of anticipation himself, when he caught the little byplay. “Bad one?”  
  
Lestrade sighed. “Yeah. None of us like it when it’s kids. Not even Sherlock.” Lestrade shook his head. “He doesn’t say it, but he’s always quieter, during. No baiting, won’t take any bait.”  
  
“And this one?”  
  
Lestrade looked at him. “Might want to stay home. It’s about as bad as it gets.”  
  
John shook his head. “You know me better than that. And I doubt it’s worse than Afghanistan.”  
  
“Yeah, I do know you. Know _him_ better, too. That’s why I have my car this time. No cruiser.”  
  
“Good. I’m sick of taxis.”  
  
“But as far as Afghanistan goes...”  
  
John just raised an eyebrow over his last swallow of tepid tea.  
  
“There’s some things war doesn’t prepare you for.”  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
John looked out the window, pretending to be engrossed by the trip because speaking meant adding to the tension. The ride to the scene seemed to take forever, and there wasn’t any data to keep Sherlock occupied. He wouldn’t let Lestrade tell him about the murder either, unwilling to trust ‘ham-handed speculation spoon-fed to him by dabblers’. They couldn’t discuss the case, but neither could they think of anything else, so the only sounds on the long drive were Sherlock’s irritated huffs and the strumming of his fingers against the plastic of the interior door.  
  
John just shrugged and burrowed into his coat, trying to find the happy place he had inhabited earlier that morning.  
  
He didn’t succeed. There was too much anticipation running around his skull. If just the promise of adrenaline could do this to John, what did it do to Sherlock?  
  
They finally pulled up to a mass of cars and lights surrounding the husk of an industrial site overlooking the Thames. Mycroft occasionally grabbed him and stole him away to industrial sites, but those were just unused, not completely defunct and decrepit. This one was five derelict stories of rectangular brick with narrow windows, and the facing of one wall was crumbling from the top down, revealing concrete slab and twists of rebar underneath. Bits of rubbish were spread like mulch and disposable plastic shopping bags were caught on smashed fencing and waving in the breeze like post-apocalyptic flowers.  
  
On a day like today, with a foggy chill and the the odd drizzle of rain, the building cultivated an air of complete depression. It wasn’t surprising that someone had used it as an impromptu crypt.  
  
As sepulchres went, John hoped he rated better.  
  
Sepulchre. That was a good word. Better remember that for the blog.  
  
Sepulchre.  
  
Sepulchre.  
  
Sepulchretudinous.  
  
Ha.  
  
Sherlock would tell him he was being silly, but he’d say it with a tolerant smile. Much to his surprise John had turned into a bit of a writer because of the blog, and had taken to jotting down words he liked as they came to him. He’d always liked words, but now he had the idea that something could be made of _his_ words.  
  
Something else he’d have to thank Sherlock for.  
  
It wasn’t raining at the moment, but the sky was heavy with it as they got out of Lestrade’s silver Jetta. Sherlock’s feet had hit the pavement before the car had come to a complete stop. John, used to Sherlock’s lack of patience, was at his heels, almost jogging to keep up with his long stride.  
  
The car was within the tape so they had neatly ducked a face-off with Sally, and John couldn’t recognize most of the others that had gathered. A drawn-looking blond woman was propped up outside an access door that flanked a closed and dented bay door. Sherlock made a beeline for her, and she looked at Sherlock, and then to Lestrade who nodded in confirmation. She stepped back, allowing her weight to depress the push handle, backing into it to swing it wider for them.  
  
John wasn’t Sherlock level savvy, but he noticed the way she averted her eyes away from the interior.  
  
She pointed to the left. “Past the support pillar and around the corner.” She frowned and cleared her throat. “There’s a smaller workroom.”  
  
Sherlock raced ahead so John called out a quick “Thanks!” before following him. Lestrade stayed with the woman at the door for a moment with a question about the property owner, but John had no ears for that. It wasn’t immediate, and Sherlock’s lack of interest told him it probably wasn’t important anyway..  
  
He’d taken out his pen light. The day was overcast enough, and the windows filthy enough that everything was cast in a late twilight. No lights were on, and the rusted hulks of old machinery, the winch chains dangling useless and noose-like from the ceiling, the musty smell he’d come to associate with the squatting homeless, it all made the scene look spooky in a way that screamed contrived. It was too book-perfect not to be. It was only missing windy rattling or the film noir sound of precise footsteps.  
  
Sherlock seemed to think so too, because he slowed and panned his light around, catching the cobwebbed corners of the room and the heavy fall of dust on everyth-- almost everything. John saw what Sherlock had seen, a clean swath of floor had been cut through the filth, a swath they were walking on like a grim red carpet, leading them to the viewing box for the opening act.  
  
“Staged?” John had to stop himself from whispering, kowtowing to the ambiance left by a killer, but he dislike the way his voice ricocheted around the cavernous space.  
  
“Like an opera.”  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
Sherlock swept past the sergeant on duty, mid-thirties divorced single desperate for a child rather fancies Lestrade, but he barely saw her because the facility had his attention. The facility that housed the crime was too good to be true. John had a stack of dramatic movies at home with budgets of millions that didn’t have this kind of setting. It was a penny dreadful. A police procedural with expensive lighting and self-consciously chic cinematography.  
  
And the wide swath of clean that cut through the gloom just cinched matters.  
  
Sherlock hated instinct. Not the quicker-than-thought action that could save his life by telling him to _movemovemove_ at the right time, but this. There were no obvious clues that he could follow to tell him that this case was personal between Sherlock and the perpetrator. As he walked through the building taking in the defunct equipment, _die-making, machining, extrusion, blow molding, injection molding, bankruptcy over five years ago, parts cannibalized and the working machines sold, bank ownership, in never-ending court battle_ , _ultimately unimportant and only significant because of its availability and probably its...ambiance_ , he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all for him. There was nothing concrete for him to point at, but his sub-conscious brain must be filtering hundreds of different points of minutiae to come to the conclusion that Sherlock was meant to be here as a witness/participant/something. This was for _him._  
  
Sherlock deduced based on acute observation paired with statistical probability. He read copious amounts of raw numerical data, detailed studies, statistical analyses, and cataloged the information for later use. When he was deducing John’s phone, Harry’s alcoholism was the best guess because the other alternatives, _an illness like Parkinson’s 13.4 per 100,000 and only 4% occurring below age sixty, likelihood of John having sibling over sixty exceedingly small, or plugging it in in the dark 3%, previous owner was not so welded to technology that they must have it with them to the last moment_ , were a much smaller statistical likelihood than being inebriated, _10-20% of men, 3-10% of women though that is increasing/getting diagnosed more often._  
  
But there was nothing concrete and numerical that he could define at the moment that was leading him towards the conclusion that everything he saw was carefully stage set with him in mind. This was very much as he understood more plebian minds to work and he _Did Not Like It_. Clear cause and effect was superior in every way.  
  
He’d have to ask John if everyone normal went round with this feeling of anticipatory dread all the time, or if it only manifested in special circumstances.  
  
Might explain why Anderson was so craven and weasel-like.  
  
But so would inbreeding and eating lead paint.  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
John couldn’t get over the feeling that something was off. It might be the crime scene, but he’d been to plenty and never felt this type of wrongness. Maybe it was the agitation that Sherlock was telegraphing. Maybe it was Lestrade’s warning at the flat.  
  
Lestrade caught up to them as they went round the corner, following the clean path. “Dust mop left outside the door we entered.”  
  
“I’ll need samples.”  
  
“Not much to sample. They took the disposable dust head and the dust with it.”  
  
They reached a steel industrial double door and Lestrade irised his way in front of Sherlock to bar him for just a moment.  
  
“Gloves. I need this by the book. It’s...” Lestrade had a searching look on his face, trying to find the proper words. “We have to convict.”  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes and snagged the blue rubber from his coat pocket, dangling them in front of Lestrade before pulling them on. “I always wear gloves.”  
  
“Better safe than--”  
  
But Sherlock was already opening the door. John was pulling on his own vinyl gloves, so he didn’t get the full effect of the reveal as they swung wide, but he looked up and his breath caught. Sherlock had taken only a few steps into the room before coming to a halt, and John could see why. It was...it was...  
  
He’d seen quite a bit working with Sherlock.  Crimes of passion/jealousy/money. He’d seen the work of madmen and serial killers. He’d seen bodies that had been tortured for secrets then thrown away like rubbish.  
  
But this...  
  
“Oh God.” He didn’t feel like he was going to vomit, but he felt sick to his stomach nonetheless. There were several technicians in the room, but they had retreated to the edges of the shop when they came in, looking at them uncertainly. Even Anderson looked grateful for any reason to take his eyes away from the lonely figure in the center of the concrete. Everyone looked away, looked at Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock stood there, stock still, which was odd because John always imagined him in motion at a crime scene, he vibrated with so much harnessed energy.  
  
And then Sherlock made this _noise_.  
  
It was a _terrible_ thing. As terrible as the assemblage in front of them. John had last heard that kind of agonized whimper from a five year old boy just outside Kandahar. He’d lost his entire family in a roadside bombing, the only survivor. They’d found him wrapped around his mother, half her head gone, lap a soup of viscera and blood. He’d made that sound, a keening low in the back of his throat, when John had separated him from the corpse.  
  
He’d never have expected it from Sherlock.  
  
Jesus.  
  
 _Jesus._  
  
It still didn’t prepare him for the way Sherlock’s legs gave out beneath him.  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
Lestrade put himself in front of them for a moment, arm barring the door. He sighed before speaking, as if he knew that Sherlock would mock his statement of the obvious, but felt the need to do it anyway, which drove Sherlock nuts because he knew procedure, had been following procedure, everything had already been swept by the techs, and Lestrade knew he knew all of that.  
  
“I always wear gloves.”  
  
“Better safe than--”  
  
Sherlock didn’t stick around to hear the tired aphorism Lestrade had gotten from his doddering grandmother and pushed against the heavy steel door. The springs inside the press of the door ground as he shoved, rust and disuse making them squeal as it finally swung open, catching on a hidden stop once it reached an obtuse angle. He swept into the room, taking in the group of techs well away from the scene, the dimensions and layout of the space, the...  
  
...the child in the center, eight or nine, face covered in a hood. It would be a burlap sack lined in cotton turned inside out...  
  
Redact.  
  
...the cord round the throat, hemp rope this time but sometimes variable--  stockings, scarves, or a _tie_...  
  
Redact.  
  
...the criss-cross of binding, intricate and dense, technique more refined, the killer more knowledgeable, but still not enough to hold in the entrails...  
  
Redact.  
  
...the bare, dirty mattress, scavenged from somewhere, disgusting with all manner of bodily fluids, red staining to pink at the edges...  
  
Re...re...  
  
...the mutilated sex organs...  
  
...the way she must have begged and screamed for hours...  
  
...the brutal sodomy of a body too small to take it...  
  
...so small...  
  
...so...  
  
And something new...  
  
...a message writ large in blood, wreathed in swirls of scarlet, broad slashes of multitudinous seas incarnadine...  
  
...a message for him.  
  
O amnis, axis, caulis, collis, clunis, crinis, fascis, folks, bless ye the Lord.  
  
It.  
  
Britten.  
  
It...  
  
Sherlock would never properly remember what happened in the next few minutes. He only had vague impressions of the world spinning, reversing its polarity around him. The laws of gravity were suddenly repealed by a higher power. He remembered hitting the floor, rubbery and gelatinous, nothing working. He remembered staring, but not processing anything, for the first time in memory a complete blank. He remembered John’s arms around him, John behind him, pulling him up, John’s voice in his ear, Lestrade’s voice overlapping it, voices blending together as others joined the chorus in concern, possibly amusement, possibly distaste for perceived weakness.  
  
He remembered half walking, half being carried from the room, being pulled outside into the drizzle which should have shocked him out of his stupor, torpid brain reactivating, but only made that stupor cold and wet as he sank to the pavement and leaned into the support of a filthy wall. John was there, kneeling next to him, questioning, taking a pulse and other doctorly things. Sherlock looked up, looked up at the sky and rocked, rocked, clasped his knees and rocked, _shouldn’t rock, nothing wrong with his cerebral cortex or basal ganglia, no, no. No stimming, no need to regulate his sensory input because nothing was computing anyway may never compute again._  
  
No.  
  
And John was there with him, facing him on his knees and John shouldn’t be on his knees for him -- it was the other way around, didn’t John know that? Sherlock wanted to ask, but John took Sherlock’s face in his hands and smoothed away the water just like he had soothed away Sherlock’s tears after a scene, and he was doing that in front of the Yard, kissing his temple and telling him it would be all right though that was obviously a lie because nothing would ever be all right.  
  
Lestrade came and wrapped Sherlock up, and what was their obsession with blankets that they always covered him so? He had a stack of them at home.  
  
“John.” Sherlock was going to ask him about the blanket. About shock. Tell him that in-hospital mortality was higher in patients with cardiogenic shock, 6.2% versus 63.6%, versus non-shock myocardial infarction patients. John would be interested in that. “John.”  
  
But once he said John’s name he couldn’t stop saying it. “John. John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn...”  
  
“Shhh. I’m here. I’m here, Sherlock. I’m here.”  
  
John was holding him, blanket wrapped round them both, and John was rocking with him.  
  
“John.”  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
Sherlock didn’t remember the ride home, either. He only recalled arriving at the curb and being manhandled onto the pavement, becoming enamoured with the play of light on a puddle of water that collected in the street. Lestrade was there, in his boring work-wear, calculated to be bland and inoffensive because in real life no one wanted their coppers handsome because handsome almost never equaled solid, honest and dependable in proletariat eyes. Lestrade must have driven, but all Sherlock could remember of him was wide, spooked eyes and concerned bleatings before he disappeared into nothing.  
  
John was there. He was always there, but John was there in a way that no one else could be, because Sherlock wanted him there, elevated John above the rest, despite John’s innate goodness, and his value judgments that forced Sherlock to be a better man because he couldn’t bear to disappoint John. Perhaps it was because of John’s natural leanings towards axiology that Sherlock trusted him so. With the work. With pain. With his submission. With other things Sherlock was hesitant to name because they left a deep ache in the center of his chest, like a shot center mass.  
  
John tugged him up the stairs, into the flat, onto the sofa. John pressed tea, too hot, too much sugar, into Sherlock’s hand. John sat there across from Sherlock, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight.  
  
John waited.  
  
Waited.  
  
Patient man, John.  
  
John waited as Sherlock stared at the tea, watching it cool, watching his breath disturb the surface tension of the liquid with each puff of air, a motion timed with every exhale, pushing against the cohesive force of liquid molecules.  
  
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the problem is.”  
  
“I thought the SOP was not to push.”  
  
“Are you saying you’re standard?”  
  
Sherlock tried for a wry smile to share the joke, but John wasn’t joking, and when Sherlock went to put the tea mug down it was shaking. Sherlock stared at his own asthenic hand, pale gone to bone white and grim, a tremor that wouldn’t cease.  
  
“Lestrade will have it out of you tomorrow anyway.”  
  
He started thinking again. Didn’t like it. He stood abruptly and removed his coat, tossing it to the side. He stared at John the entire time. John, who looked completely unfazed as Sherlock unbuttoned his cuffs and the front placket of his white dress shirt. Sherlock unfastened his belt with one hand while he grabbed John’s arm, pulling him up and dragging him towards Sherlock’s room. His trousers were already sagging round his hips as he made it to the bed, and they were quickly disposed of along with his pants and shoes.  
  
Naked. Naked was good. Naked was freeing. Naked meant he wouldn’t have to think. He palmed his own cock and groaned, anticipating what was about to happen.  
  
“John.” John John John John John. Sherlock sat on the bed, legs spread and leaning back on one elbow. He pulled John, still acquiescent, still all good, a study in insouciance, in between his thighs. “Please.” This is what John is for. Reordering. Rebooting. Tabula rasa for the work.  
  
He had John by the jumper, had John by the mouth, tongue diving deep, giving John what he liked, what he wanted, and John liked to kiss, yes? Slow and deep, and Sherlock was rather apathetic about kissing outside of a scene, but John loved it, and what John wanted, John got.  
  
But John wasn’t giving in to the kiss. He kept it soft -- not quite chaste, but nothing that would embarrass him in a church. When Sherlock tried to pull him down, covering Sherlock like a blanket, John held fast, putting a hand on Sherlock’s chest to put space between them.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“I want you to stop looking at me and _do this_.” John had knowing eyes, which was just a foolish flight of fancy, because what did John know anyway? John was just as obtuse as the rest of them, just as blind stumbling ignorant outside of his own bailiwick.  
  
“But what do you want?”  
  
Sherlock leaned in, kissing the side of John’s throat, a pulse point, scent like gunpowder and witchhazel...licked. “I want you to hurt me.” Yes. Yes. Sherlock spoke directly into John’s ear, let his tongue trail the lobe, hitting all of John’s carefully catalogued arousal points with lips and hands. _Lobe, pulse point, nape of neck, right inner elbow, torso just under the armpit, iliac crest_. “I want you to fuck me. And fuck me. And fuck me...”  
  
“Sherlock...”  
  
Sherlock grabbed at John again, this time throwing his weight behind it, and he quickly had John on the bed, under him, and Sherlock’s hands were under John’s blue jumper, Sherlock’s mouth was travelling John’s collarbone.  
  
“You can do anything you want to me. Bruise me. Cut me. Whip me. Beat me -- just fuck me and make it hurt. You’ve fantasized about it. Do it.” Sherlock slotted their hips together, riding his cock into the groove of groin and thigh. “I want you to.”  
  
But John...froze underneath him.  
  
“Crucible.”  
  
Sherlock tensed for a moment, hanging his head against John’s neck, his hands on John tensing with him.  
  
When John spoke again, his voice was hoarse. “Crucible. I’m not joking.”  
  
Sherlock jerked, then sat up, rolling off John and to his side, away from John. Not looking at John. He curled up, knees to chest, chin tucked in.  
  
Sherlock couldn’t stifle the whimper that escaped.  
  
Bit not good. Bit not good. Bit not...  
  
“No, it’s okay. Really.” John pressed against Sherlock’s back, arm going round him. “I’m not angry.”  
  
“John.”  
  
“I know. But not like this.”  
  
“You keep saying that as if it means something. I need--”  
  
“Not like this. We’re better than that.”  
  
Sherlock laughed, and he could hear the thread of hysteria in his own voice; wondered at it. “Better.” It sounded and tasted like bitter.  
  
“You are, you know. Better than that. We can’t just because you don’t want to talk. You don’t have to right now.”  
  
“I don’t want to _think_.” John tightened his hold when Sherlock began to rock forwards and backwards, pressed a dry, sexless kiss to Sherlock’s shoulder.  
  
Once the tears started to fall they refused to stop. But there was some comfort in the way that John cried with him.

 

\--- --- ---

  
When John woke it was evening, and he had the slight headache he always had on the few occasions he’d gone to sleep crying. His face felt tight where the tears had dried and his eyes were puffy. He hadn’t cried for himself when he’d been injured and returned home to nothing but a bedsit and despair, yet he could cry for Sherlock and not even know the reason why. He had no idea what had happened to Sherlock, but seeing Sherlock in that much emotional pain, when Sherlock had such a hard time conveying any emotion...Sherlock’s tears had inspired John’s own. He didn’t even find that sort of thing peculiar anymore.  
  
He turned on his side, searching with his hand, but Sherlock was already gone, the bed cold where he had curled up into John.  
  
John tugged off the shirt he’d slept in and pulled on one of Sherlock’s few jumpers. He went to the toilet and splashed cold water on his face to make himself feel more human. He tried to avoid the mirror, but what he did catch was not reassuring. He hadn’t looked this drawn since post-Afghanistan pre-Sherlock days.  
  
He’d told himself before that he couldn’t care too much, that this would break him if he did. He’d told himself that him and Sherlock was probably a temporary thing that he shouldn’t read much into. Stinginess with the emotional investment, he’d cautioned.  
  
He’d thought he’d found that balance.  
  
What rubbish.  
  
When John exited Sherlock’s room he’d presumed he would find the flat empty. Instead, Sherlock and Mycroft were standing at polar ends of the room in a silent, icy detente. Sherlock was at the window tracing the hoarfrost with a long finger, wearing a John Cage t-shirt and a pair of plaid pajama pants. Mycroft was close to the front door, but when John entered he moved further into the room as if he was no longer unsure of his welcome.  
  
“I brought the file.”  
  
“Current?” Sherlock raised his eyebrow, trying for normality, but the expression on his face gave away his fragility. “Or older?”  
  
“Current.” Mycroft frowned and looked down at the manila folder in his hand as if he was looking through it, making John realize that Sherlock was not the only one who was affected. “It has information on the two most recent victims. Ava Williamson and Olivia Smythe. Their families--”  
  
“Don’t.” Sherlock whipped around, glaring. “I can’t--”  
  
And John was suddenly damned tired of the secrecy. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”  
  
Mycroft and Sherlock looked at each other, sharing some silent conversation that ended when Sherlock tore his eyes away, looking angry. “You tell him.”  
  
Mycroft stuck his nose in the air. “Can’t, or won’t?”  
  
“Don’t start that again. That became old years ago.”  
  
“We don’t have time for this. He could add another victim at any moment. Your inability to face--”  
  
“Pfft!” Sherlock blew Mycroft a raspberry and stomped off, past John and into his room, slamming the door behind him. There was a quiet snick of a lock and then nothing.  
  
John looked at Mycroft expecting him to leave, but Mycroft just sighed, then sank down into the nearest chair where he put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. It was the only time he’d ever seen Mycroft deliberately vulnerable, and if the Queen had taken a naked skinny-dip in the Thames John wouldn’t have been more shocked. Mycroft ran his hands through his hair until it stood up like a gingerish halo, then looked up at John.  
  
“I wish he hadn’t done that.”  
  
“Still unhappy with me?”  
  
Mycroft huffed. “That’s the very least of our problems. Despite what my brother has implied, I’m neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. I don’t know how much he’s told you. I don’t know where to start.”  
  
“Is this personal?”  
  
“Is this-- he hasn’t told you anything at all?” Mycroft’s look of surprise was an uncomfortable mimicry of Moriarty’s surprise face.  
  
The truth was that Sherlock was never forthcoming with anything personal unless asked a direct question. And John wasn’t good at asking direct questions because he learned early on that Sherlock would _answer them_. Sometimes in hideously unnecessary detail. “You might say that.”  
  
Mycroft took off his suit coat, tossing it across the coffee table. He leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes, looking weary. Older. Sadder. “He didn’t stay silent because he didn’t want you to know, John.” Mycroft shook his head. “He didn’t say anything because he still hasn’t faced it. It’s been almost twenty years.”  
  
“Then you do it.”  
  
Mycroft nodded, but kept his eyes closed even as he brought his fingers together in the same posture John often saw Sherlock employ. Family trait, then.  
  
“It is the same thing with the recent victims’ families. He doesn’t want to hear about them, not because he lacks empathy, but because he has too much.” Mycroft sighed. “The lies we tell ourselves are the most revealing. Sherlock tells people that he doesn’t care. What does that say about him?”  
  
“I dunno. What does that say about you?”  
  
Mycroft was Mr. Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth and went on as if John hadn’t spoken. “Sherlock is not very good at lying in the long term. Even to himself.” Mycroft paused, thinking, and when he spoke again the question seemed random and tangential. Much like the Holmes brothers. “Do you enjoy Sherlock’s violin?”  
  
Stupid question. John had a soul after all. “He’s an amazing violinist. He could be a professional.” John couldn’t help the pride that bled into his voice. It was always like that. He couldn’t help but praise Sherlock’s accomplishments. It was like they belonged to John, because Sherlock was John’s.  
  
Funny then, that it had started during that first meeting, as if John had already known who possessed whom.  
  
“Sherlock’s an _adequate_ violinist. He was an amazing singer, though.” Mycroft’s eyebrows twisted up for a moment before he smoothed them back into the zen mask he was trying to maintain. “Sherrinford was the violinist.”  
  
John suddenly had an inkling of where this was going, a little churn of horror deep in his belly telling him what was what, but he had to ask all the same. “Sherrinford?”  
  
“Our sister.”  
  
“Oh. Shit.” John sat down hard. He had expected something bad, sinister even, but nothing of this caliber.  
  
“Sherlock’s twin sister.”  
  
“He’s...how did he...he’s so sensitive.”  
  
“He didn’t. He imploded.”  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
“They were nine and a half. I was supposed to be watching them. But I was seventeen, and I wasn’t born in a three piece suit. I was...”  
  
“You were typical.”  
  
“As typical as a Holmes can be.” Mycroft’s mouth quirked up. “I was lucky. I got the brains from our father and our mother’s social grace. Sherlock was much less functional as a boy. Obsessed with truth and numbers, morbid, oversensitized, sometimes violent, major problems with food. Stand-offish with almost everyone.”  
  
“And Sherrinford?”  
  
“Despite being fraternal twins, they looked almost identical. She was much more like me, however.”  
  
“So not autistic.”  
  
“No. A prodigy, but much more aware of people and society. Still, Sherlock adored her. She was the only person he would really interact with. And she taught him how to mimic normal behavior.”  
  
John started at a sudden thought. “He blames you, doesn’t he? That’s what that was about.”  
  
“He blames a lot of people. Our father. The police.” Mycroft leaned back in the chair with a powerful exhale. “But me most of all. I don’t think you quite understand his obsession with lying. I’d taken responsibility for them, said I’d watch them.”  
  
“And yet...”  
  
“And yet.”  
  
“When he plays the violin, you flinch.”  
  
Mycroft managed a glare, but it was half-hearted. “I don’t go poking my fingers into your bullet wounds, do I?”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“Then quit poking at mine.” Mycroft nodded to Sherlock’s violin case. “That’s hers, you know. He took it up, after. He still sang...for a while. Bass-baritone. Sang Purcell beautifully. He could have had an amazing career. It was sudden -- shocked everyone because he could have been another Bryn Terfel.”  
  
“He was that good?” Not that John doubted it. He couldn’t imagine Sherlock not excelling at whatever he threw himself into. He could easily imagine that voice turning into song, deep and rich and just as abrasive and challenging as Sherlock himself.  
  
“Incredible. Which is what makes his defection such a savage waste. With hindsight there were signs, but at the time it seemed an abrupt change. As much as he seems obsessed with crime now, he had been just as invested in music. He didn’t have a plan B, so his self-destruction became much more apparent without school or a boyfriend to hide behind.”  
  
“How do you mean?”  
  
“He was just about to finish his degree in physics and musical performance at RCM and Imperial College.”  
  
“I thought he was a chemist.”  
  
“Our father was a chemist, and Sherlock did read chemistry first. But he couldn’t resist the combination of physics and opera.” Mycroft smiled. “His performance of Look Through The Port is incomparable. And he was the best Cold Genius I’ve ever witnessed. When he left he was singing Balstrode in Peter Grimes. Are you familiar with Britten?”  
  
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream, right?” His opera knowledge had increased greatly during his tenure at 221B, but it was still patchy.  
  
“Yes, but I meant in a more general sense.”  
  
“Not really, no. I did clarinet- lots of Brahms and Mozart.”  
  
“Then I think you have an appointment with itunes, tonight. It would deepen your understanding of Sherlock if you examined Britten’s entire oeuvre. It shows where he was at when he chucked it all away.” Mycroft sounded bitter for a moment. “He liked baroque opera, but later on he became fascinated by modern, atonal, dissonant work. It seemed to unhealthily mirror his personal life.”  
  
“Victor Trevor?”  
  
“Yes.” Mycroft drummed his fingers together for a moment and frowned. “When he began to wean himself from it and became interested in the works of Britten, I thought it was his university’s influence, that he had turned a corner. I was happy for him-- at first. That was before I came to realize what it meant.”  
  
“Which was?”  
  
“Britten wrote about unique, excluded or misunderstood individuals-- his favorite theme was a loss of innocence.”  
  
“That fits.”  
  
“Sherlock tried to remove himself emotionally and he began to embrace Britten because of his themes. You should have seen him in that last production. There’s a line that I remember, burned into my brain because of the way he delivered it.” Mycroft paused to take an audible breath before adding, “When horror breaks one heart, all hearts are broken.”  
  
“Profound.” And sad. And truer for it.  
  
“I think I knew then, that he was going to toss it all away.” Mycroft had a far away look on his face, and John couldn’t get over how human he looked in that moment. “All hearts are broken. It’s a good summation of the past two and a half decades.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” And he was. It was obvious that Sherrinford’s death was the catalyst for Sherlock’s downward spiral. It explained so much -- the drugs, the misanthropy, the aversion towards caring for anything and everything not within his own head. He didn’t just claim sociopathy. He hoped for it, wanted it, like it would make everything alright. Sherlock, the very genesis of fake it till you make it.  
  
“Playing Balstrode, but so hungry when he looked at Grimes.  I could see how much he wanted that for himself. Act II, Scene II, Grimes wanting a normal life but too damaged to grasp it.”  
  
“That’s hard for me to imagine. He seems so confident.”  
  
“Oh, he is. That’s no act. But emotion was haunting him so he did what very few people are capable of. He excised it.”  
  
“Instead of dealing with it.”  
  
“In the process he didn’t just remove emotion, he removed his _voice_.”  
  
“Christ. He deleted it, didn’t he?”  
  
“He tried. He’s tried to delete a lot of things. He stopped singing, however. I haven’t heard him sing in more than a decade.”  
  
“He shows emotion.”  
  
“To you, perhaps. Britten once said that he portrayed the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual. And Sherlock is quite the vicious individual.”  
  
“Don’t talk about him like that when he isn’t here.” John hated this, the fact that so many people made judgements about Sherlock’s mental and emotional health when they never had the true picture of the man. Even his own brother, the brother that seemed colder, harder and more remote than Sherlock had ever appeared. “You say you know him, but I don’t think you do. Not anymore.”  
  
“I don’t know what you mean. He is listening.”  
  
“You’re so sure...”  
  
Mycroft raised his voice slightly. “He can’t declaim in the lower octave of his range.”  
  
The door muffled his voice, but Sherlock’s exclamation of “filthy liar,” was perfectly coherent.  
  
“Prove it.”  
  
“Get out.”  
  
“Wishy-washy an octave below middle C.”  
  
“You own a Kenny G album.”  
  
“You liked Metal Machine Music. And I do _not_.”  
  
John cut in to the childish debate. “As fascinating as these revelations are, why are you telling me everything? I appreciate it and I’m honored that you shared something so personal, but this isn’t like you. You keep things close, no matter what.” John pointed at the folder that Mycroft had placed on the table next to his jacket.  
  
Mycroft pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because they are related and the choice to keep silent has been taken away from me; because the killer wrote something profoundly disturbing.”  
  
John reached for the file, flipping through it till he reached a photo of the bloody words and the mad strokes around it. “The notes here say that it has religious overtones, probably cult related.”  
  
“As much as I hate to agree with my brother’s assessment of people in general, they really aren’t the sharpest tools employed by the government.”  
  
John raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to explain.  
  
“O amnis, axis, caulis, collis, clunis, crinis, fascis, folks, bless ye the Lord.”  
  
“A prayer?”  
  
“A vintage Latin lesson recitation. One with pederast overtones.”  
  
“Not surprising. It doesn’t exclude the idea of a cult, though.”  
  
“It’s also a line from Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.”  
  
“Oh.” John thought about it for a moment, all of the ramifications becoming apparent, and his stomach pitched off a cliff. “ _Oh_.”  
  
“Exactly.” Mycroft looked tired, but determined. “He knows who Sherlock is. He knows who Sherlock was.”  
  
Not just knew, but knew him to the core. “And he’s killing other girls as a what...taunt?”  
  
Mycroft inclined his head. “Just like he killed Sherrinford.”  
  
\--- --- ---  
  
Sherlock put his hand on the doorknob, but it took an act of will to turn it and face reality. He didn’t even think to exit his room until Mycroft had left, ostensibly to oversee some avenue of research, more likely because he wanted Sherlock to emerge and interact with someone, even if it was John. Mycroft might not approve of John’s relationship with him, but John was all Sherlock had at the moment.  
  
This was intolerable.  
  
He knew he needed to figure out how to work on this case without devolution into emotional chaos. Without some measure of distance he could not function properly. He wasn’t seeing the criminal or the crime. He was seeing the victims. Molly, Niamh, Charlotte, Ava, Olivia. He was seeing Sherrinford. And to a lesser extent he was seeing himself.  
  
He couldn’t _think_.  
  
He needed...he needed...distance. Order. Tea. A touch. Quiet. A respite from Pain. Cocaine. John.  
  
He closed his eyes, trying to find the rationalism that defined his life. This was no longer the work. It was personal. And even _when_ they caught the man responsible, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best. The most hollow kind of triumph. He wouldn’t be crowing his brilliance, he would be mourning the loss of something infinitely brighter.  
  
It was a trial when it had always been a joy. Did the killer know that he was ruining this as thoroughly as he had ruined almost everything else Sherlock had held dear? Was that his goal? Did he destroy two more families just to hurt Sherlock, or was Sherlock’s deconstructed state merely a bonus?  
  
Sherlock opened the door, but taking a step into the hall was a harder thing. John was looking at him, and for the first time in recent memory Sherlock couldn’t meet someone’s eyes. John. John, who was infinitely bright as well.  
  
“Come here.” John was sitting on the sofa. His voice was moderate and thankfully normal; Sherlock wasn’t sure what he would do if John decided to coddle him. “Please.”  
  
He felt like going back to the safety of his bedroom, but his feet betrayed him by moving forward anyway, until he was standing in front of John.  
  
“C’mon.” John tugged his arm, pulling Sherlock into the seat next to him, then prodding Sherlock into laying down, his head in John’s lap. They’d sat like this before, so it was familiar instead of the babying he’d feared. Sherlock closed his eyes and didn’t even fuss when John began rubbing his head. John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.  
  
When John finally spoke, it wasn’t quite what Sherlock was expecting. “So. Opera.”  
  
Sherlock startled, then laughed despite the lack of humor. “Oh, do shut up.”  
  
John just twisted a lock of Sherlock’s hair into a corkscrew. “It’s just that I always pictured you as a tiny detective, not a petite Pavarotti.”  
  
“This is why I didn’t tell you. Endless snarking.” Sherlock sniffed, because that should be obvious.  
  
“That’s not what Mycroft said.”  
  
“Ham-fisted segue. And what does Mycroft know anyway?” Less than nothing. Mycroft, who prided himself on being the ‘normal’ one, led a life completely devoid of any richness or happiness.  
  
John stilled his hand but didn’t pull it away, cupping Sherlock’s skull in its strong cradle. “I only know what he told me.”  
  
“I don’t talk about it.”  
  
“Never?”  
  
“Ever, more like.” Therapy was the answer, in theory, but in actual practice there was most likely no therapist alive that could deal with Sherlock or the issues that needed addressing. Idiots, all.  
  
“But you don’t have that luxury anymore.”  
  
“I know.” Sherlock turned to his side, pressing his face into John’s stomach. “I know.” _John._  
  
“So why don’t you start with me?”  
  
If he were going to tell anyone the secret workings of his innermost mind, the things he kept quiet, hidden, wrapped up in cotton wool and sealed away in a nameless box, the emotions kept under heavy seal, the gravity of them pulling him in no matter how much he tried to delete, it would be John.  
  
It had to be John. He couldn’t see himself having this conversation with Lestrade, or even Mrs. Hudson.  
  
“He lied, you know.”  
  
“Mycroft?”  
  
“And not just about watching us.” Sherlock took a steadying breath. “He lied just now. He always lies. Leaving us vulnerable so he could get fucked isn’t the only reason for the divide between us.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Don’t turn boring on me now.”  
  
“Empathy, not pity.”  
  
“There’s a difference?”  
  
“Don’t be a twat.”  
  
“Which brings us back ‘round to Mycroft. Father liked him more.”  
  
“Is that it? The great sibling rivalry secret?”  
  
“Maybe I should rephrase. My father, the celebrated chemist, the man I adored and tried to emulate above all others, couldn’t stand the sight of me because I looked too much like his dear, dead baby girl. Happy?”  
  
John sucked in air, and Sherlock could feel the muscles in his abdomen tense against his cheek. “No.”  
  
“Mummy was fragile on her best days, and completely unable to cope with any level of grief, let alone the death of a child.”  
  
“So you were left alone.”  
  
Sherlock snorted. “I wish. I was left to Mycroft, who tried to _make everything up to me_. It was wretched.”  
  
“You got away as soon as you could.”  
  
Sherlock turned to look up at John. “Wouldn’t you? If I stayed at home I was a victim. At uni I could make myself into someone who wasn’t defined by...things I no longer possessed.” A sister. A heart. There were other people tonight who must have had the same dessicated reaction to a fresh wound, but his inclusion in a widening club brought no comfort.  
  
John touched Sherlock’s face with a fingertip, tracing his cheekbone, tickling the edge of his eyelashes enough to make him blink. ”Will you tell me?”  
  
Sherlock stared straight up at the ceiling. “We were outside. In a field. Near the road.”  
  
“Surrey?”  
  
“The most repellingly quotidian, _boring_ bit of Britain. I had to make my own fun, and I had an overwhelming interest in insects at the time. Especially bees.” John had seen the plethora of books Sherlock had on the subject, had even looked over them himself. Sammataro and Avitabile’s Beekeeper’s Handbook and Root’s ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture had interested him most. As did Sherlock’s carefully pinned and framed specimens. Sherlock had heard, as a child, that Einstein had said when the bees died humanity had only two years to live. Utter rot, and not just due to the false attribution, but there had been a grain of truth that had fascinated him, and still fascinated him to this day. Besides, bees were common in Surrey. Grand opera and challenging murders were not. “I had only turned away for a moment. I was...” Researching. Experimenting. Cataloguing. “...playing.”  
  
“Someone took her.”  
  
“It happened quickly. I turned around and she was gone. She’d been near the hedge that flanked the road. There was the slam of a door, the boot most likely, and all I saw was the back end of a beige Vauxhall Cavalier saloon car. One of the most common cars at the time. No plates. Nothing to deduce about it. As bland and informative as rice pudding.” Sherlock’s Adam’s apple seemed to grow two sizes too large.  
  
John, who felt for people he didn’t know on the very best of days, looked stricken. He looked like he was trying to find words, but Sherlock had heard every variation on the theme of sorrow and loss, and didn’t want to hear the same from John. “She was missing for a week and a half.”  
  
“The...the same?”  
  
“Similar. The same killer, certainly. My parents thought I was going to go insane, but all I knew was that I could not function without her.” An understatement. He didn’t know how to convey the horror of that time. The waiting. The hoping. Then the hopelessness when she had been found. Discarded like she had been nothing instead of everything. Just thinking about it made his brain want to eat itself like the world serpent. If he couldn’t think about it he couldn’t feel it.“They didn’t want to tell me the details.”  
  
“I can imagine.”  
  
“So I snuck in to the police station.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Sherlock didn’t know why John persisted in cultivating an air of surprise. “I’m a very good actor when I wish to be. Even then.” He’d wandered in, teary-eyed with some blubbery, trumped up tale of a missing dog. Pulling the heartstrings of the feeble-minded officers manning the front. “It was surprisingly easy for a small boy to sneak in to homicide.”  
  
John snorted.  
  
“I wish that I hadn’t.” Sherlock tilted his head towards the file that still sat on the table. “It was almost the same. A little less elaborate. There had been three other murders in a similar vein. The tool used for strangulation was different, but the rope to bind them was exact. As was the cutting tool he used to...” Sherlock stopped, feeling lost, running his hand over his throat.  
  
“She was strangled with a tie, wasn’t she?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And they found...nothing?”  
  
“Not a trace.” Sherlock pursed his mouth. “They found me screaming in front of the board of photos, and someone recognized me. Took me home in a cruiser-- took pity on me. But they made it very clear that I wasn’t wanted.” He scowled. “That was my first introduction to the idiocy of the police. Carl Powers was the second.”  
  
“But you looked into it later.”  
  
It was Sherlock’s turn to snort. “Of course. But they were right for once. Not a trace. An intelligent monster.”  
  
“Then why are you so surprised that this has happened again?”  
  
“Because she was the last. The killings stopped and the conclusion was that the murderer had either died, moved, or was incarcerated for an unrelated crime.”  
  
“That was what? 1986? ‘87?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And this new one, this was the second one that Lestrade had been called in on?”  
  
Sherlock and John both looked at each other, each coming to the same realization. Sherlock sat up suddenly, grabbing John by his ears and pulling him so close he could feel John’s breath. “How is it that Lestrade somehow missed the fact that a similar string of killings happened a quarter of a century ago?”  
  
“He...didn’t?”  
  
“Very good, John. Even Lestrade isn’t that much of a blunderer.”  
  
“But he didn’t know you were connected.”  
  
“Because someone didn’t want him to know. They didn’t want me to go in forewarned. Everything was staged-- not just the setting.”  
  
“They wanted your reaction.”  
  
“They got my reaction.” Sherlock furrowed his brow,, because these new deaths might have been engineered just to get his attention.  
  
“He was watching you.” Understanding bloomed on John’s face. “He was there. Someone was on the inside.  
  
“Yes.” A chance. The killer couldn’t hide forever.  
  
“He’ll be long gone by now, but there’s a thread there for you to follow.” John’s face was suddenly incandescent with hope and faith. John, who knew that Sherlock could, _would_ , find the sick bastard who had torn so many people apart.  
  
John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.  
  
Sherlock had been in such upheaval lately, mental turmoil where there had been only-- no. Call it what it was. He’d been in emotional turmoil, and putting away his feelings until they were forgotten was no longer a valid, working solution.  
  
John was at the center of the maelstrom, a simple, ordinary figure at the eye of a hurricane. He had blithely entered Sherlock’s life and proceeded to take it over centimeter by centimeter, until Sherlock was grasping only tatters of his independence ( _loneliness_.)  
  
Sherlock pulled John in to a kiss, putting everything he couldn’t articulate into it though he kept the connection soft and non-aggressive. He wanted to take all of his heartbreak and sorrow, all of his time alone and bereft, and let John transmute it. It wasn’t a long kiss, but it was the only vivid point of color in a world gone to ash. John’s brightness wasn’t like Sherrinford’s. Hers had been the warm gold of the sun. It nurtured, it warmed. John’s was the hot, dense dot before the big bang. Powerful. Explosive. All-consuming in the aftermath. Too much to be contained, like Sherlock’s head.  
  
He buried his face in John’s shoulder and breathed him in, wanting to say so much, for once not knowing how to say it, just that it needed to be said. He didn’t know if it was simply alexithemia, or if it was the overload of feeling that he was working through. Everything felt foreign; the pain, the dark undertow of emotion, even this burgeoning longing for John. Everything that he had kept bottled tight had become pressurized enough to burst at once, the new murders creating an open valve.  
  
There were things that demanded a voice, independent of Sherlock’s brain, but he kept them swaddled tight. He knew this was not the time to talk about his (their?) inchoate love. And anything but comfort John would react to with horror, as if this personal nadir negated any informed consent.  
  
Still, he had to try. John had to understand because Sherlock didn’t know what would come next. He was stumbling blind in this.  
  
John needed to know. John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.  
  
“John...you...” Sherlock rested his forehead against John’s cheek. Poor John, who looked unsure and worried, solid and dependable.  
  
How do you tell someone that they are everything?  
  
“Maria Callas’ voice was far from perfect. Flawed.” Sherlock spoke softly in John’s ear. “It deteriorated rapidly.”  
  
“Yes?” John looked befuddled at the sudden change in subject, the tangent Sherlock’s thoughts had taken, but he remained patient, used to it, and having it explained to him.  
  
“Everyone knows who Maria Callas is. Everyone. She will be a star forever.”  
  
“You’re being opaque.”  
  
“And you are being obtuse. But that is the point entirely. You are far from perfect. Flawed.” Sherlock hugged him close as if he were about to be snatched away . “But there will never be another like you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please review. I love them so...


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